


weltschmerz

by eggutart



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Smoking, TW: Blood, WWI AU, newmann - Freeform, tw: ed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-04-26 04:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14394018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggutart/pseuds/eggutart
Summary: in which the world inside their heads is far better than the world around them.





	1. Chapter 1

The enlistment form is positioned on the Geiszlers’ door in sloppy, uneven staples, the rusting metal protruding through the poorly inked initials.  _ Arbeite du für den sieg _ _ 1 _ is printed in bold lettering across the top. The envelope is not untouched before it reaches Newton’s hands; an edge of the creped paper is torn, the soot-laden fingerprints of an adolescent as evidence. 

Hermann knows of the draft first, but he lets Mr. Geiszler take this apotheosis because  foremorst on the ongoing list of of Things-Newton’s-Father-Hates is Hermann. And adding the implication of Hermann being closer to his son than he was himself was nothing Hermann would like to utter. Mr. Geiszler is ecstatic that his good for nothing son is going to war. He is shaking Newton’s hand. Mr. Geiszler cannot even muster an embrace for his son who is a soldier now. Going to war to die. Hermann watches from his window, the one that is parallel to Newton’s because Hermann will not receive the form and he will not be a soldier. 

His right leg is paralyzed from the knee down and so Germany would sequester him to a warehouse in the field where the air smells too often of glue to be good, to be healthy. Hermann Gottlieb is an embarrassment; to Germany, to his once-family, to Newton’s father, and to himself. The lack of a form should be a positive. Hermann would not be categorized into dead or alive on a spreadsheet sent back to Berlin after bullet shells peppered the sky like falling stars. Instead, he would be providing the very downpour for their side to rain onto the opposition, and either way it felt wrong. Wrong that he was supplying the means of destruction so  _ goddamn _ barbarian and wrong that he would be separated from the person he held most dear. Hermann did not want to think of the nights that he would lay on his mattress stuffed with bricks and hay and feel the sharp twang of vinegar filling his lungs as he wondered if Newton was dead or alive.

Mr. Geiszler leaves Newton’s room with a hand on his shoulder but fingers curled and lips that formed  _ I’m proud of you, son _ . 

“Hermann,” Newton calls, popping the copper latches on his window open. He leans his elbows on the paint chips that remain on the windowsill and rests his head upon his hand. Newton’s perpetually disheveled hair is gently tossed into sea-swept waves by the breeze, his glasses perched on the edge of his freckled nose. Hermann acts as if he had not been detailing each move of the scene that played out moments ago in the neighboring apartment. With a false air of being startled he looked from his notebook to meet Newton’s eyes. In moments like these Hermann is relieved they  _ do _ live in separate homes because nothing but haphazard lines were scrawled on the otherwise blank pages. 

“Newton,” Hermann returns, adjusting his body so he is facing the other. 

“I’m going to be a soldier,” Newton says, voice lacking any vivacity, a monotonous declaration they both thought the same of. Hermann swallows. 

“I know,” he says, quiet. They do not speak for a moment. There is nothing to talk about. Newton cannot stay and Hermann cannot go and these are the facts; these choices are not up to them to decide any more. 

Hermann wishes Newton never turned eighteen. He wishes to be back the night of January eighteenth, Newton’s very last seventeen. They had sat on the roof, the moon a sliver, barely enough to reflect upon skin. Newton smoked while Hermann read. The acrid puffs of the cigarette made Hermann cringe, but the orange glow bathing Newton’s face in a soft light was more than enough consolation. Embers illuminated the lines of his skin and connected his freckles into constellations. Hermann wishes he could stop time. So Newton would never be a soldier, so Hermann can relive the knots tangling themselves inside his chest. 

Without precedent Newton speaks, as if he is a mind reader. Or, maybe, because he knows Hermann all too well. “I’ll write to you,” he says, tone eliciting faux hope. Is that for himself? Or is it for Hermann?

Hermann hums. “I might write you back.”

The sight of the crinkles by Newton’s eyes and his lips drawn to his cheeks is infectious. Hermann cannot help but share. 

 

In the coming week Newton receives an olive canvas jacket from the army corps. It has more pockets than Hermann would ever deem necessary and five numbers aligned in a perfect arc across the back. The shoulders are too wide for Newton’s frame and it is both endearing and a stark reminder that he is nothing more than a child and he is too young to die for a country that cares more for their praise than their decaying soldiers. Newton Geiszler has been simmered down to five numbers: 13-138. They are random to the women who sewed the patches to the jacket. They are just the interval after 13-137. In Hermann’s eyes, they have not been drawn from the satchel without care. Thirteen, for the thirteenth disciple, the one that will betray Jesus, and one hundred thirty-eight, the angel number that states that we create our own realities. Hermann tells him this. 

"You aren't religious," Newton says, picking at the stitches that hold the numerals to the back of his jacket. Unworn, not yet littered upon by soot and various other war-like constituents, Newt thought. 

"I'm not," Hermann says, gently removing Newton's hand as to not tear the yellowed thread from the second three. He lingers his fingers upon Newton's knuckles, for a moment not minding the dirt weaving its way into the grain of Hermann's fingertips. 

"My mother was Jewish," he points out, before adding, "and numbers are the handwriting of God." Newton scoffs. 

"You do not really believe that, do you?" Hermann avoids the question, because he isn't completely sure that he does. Instead, he says the words his mother would whisper into his ear before he slept. 

" _ Das glück hilft dem kühnen _ ." 

"Luck helps the audacious," Newton repeats. Fortune favors the brave. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newton’s arms fall slack against his body, fingernails digging into the palm of his hand, willing himself not to cry. He knows if he cries it makes this all real and as much as Newton seems to like the brand seared into his back in the shape of 13-138 he is scared. He is scared for more than his country because this, to him, is bigger than a war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my twitter is @kajius and my tumblr is kaijius.tumblr.com !! please leave comments i appreciate them very very much <33

 

The last night Hermann has with Newton it is raining. It prevents another roof visit and Hermann curses it for that. Hermann’s room is cold, he’s cold, but he’s used to it. And he can’t help but think of how cold it would be on the field. He shivers.

The usual comfort of the dim yellowed glow of Newton’s lamp is gone. He can’t see it from his peripheral; something so trivial he didn’t realize that he would miss it until now. Piece by piece, Newton is being taken away. And, reciprocally, parts of Hermann are fading, too. When Hermann looks over, the room is empty. He feels his heart fall, a peach pit dressing the space it used to be. He looks back to his hands, to where he sits on the bare floor of his room. Red and white twine is strung about his fingers, a sorry attempt at a bow. He doesn’t know how bakers  _ do _ this, Hermann thinks, tie those perfectly symmetrical strings around brown paper packaging. He’s been trying for the better part of fifteen minutes to no avail.

Inside the parcel is three boxes of cigarettes, apricot jam, two cans of condensed milk (Hermann remembers fondly when Newton would drink the stuff straight from the carton. Somehow, now, Hermann didn’t find it gross), a fountain pen, and a photo of the two of them. Not in the absolute  _ best _ condition, but it seemed perfectly, tragically fitting. Before placing it on top of the other goods he held it, hands shaking against the image of Newton’s arm thrown around Hermann’s shoulder, faces slightly blurred because they couldn’t stop laughing long enough to pause for the shutter. Hermann puts the photo down before an imminent tear falls onto it and ruins it. 

His bow of twine is not baker-quality, but he figures it will do. With a piece of cream packing tape Hermann attaches a note to the top of the parcel, slightly masked underneath the haphazard twine.

_ Don’t forget about me, you absolute fool _ , Herman thinks as he fastens the paper to the package, both assuring himself of his latent thoughts and reminding Newton.

Would he need reminding?

Hermann shakes his head, standing unsteadily and balancing himself with the protruding windowsill. He picks his makeshift pipe-cane up from where it rests against the wall. It makes a small black splotch on the wall, and Hermann sighs and tries to wipe it away with his thumb. It was truly no use anymore to try and clean a house that was destined to fall apart at the start, but in a way it makes Hermann feel appeased. Appeased that he was making some sort of difference, even if it is only for himself.

It is half past seven and Hermann is boiling the last of the pasta when the knocker hits the door four times. 

“Jesus,” Hermann says under his breath, shuffling to the door, “I’m not deaf.” He takes back his muttering after Newton steps into the foyer. 

“Hermann,” he says, as if examining the house for the first time. Hermann rolls his eyes.

“You’re early,” Hermann replies, glancing at the clock to make sure he isn’t mistaken. Newton makes himself perfectly at home, as always, draping his jacket over a hook beside Hermann’s and toeing his boots off. Hermann’s eyes linger upon the hook. It’s the green canvas jacket, the 13-138 jacket. Newton is favoring it on his own, and for this Hermann feels the slightest edge of venom. Newton wants this.

“I know,” Newton says, meeting Hermann’s eyes just short of guiltily. They stand there for a moment, night air seeping into the room from the space between the door and the frame. “This house was always so lopsided,” Newton breathes, a smile playing on his lips. Hermann doesn’t like the past tense. He nods briefly.

“I think the pasta’s boiling,” he says, a ludicrous excuse to return to the kitchen.

Newton walks around the living room, fingers outstretched to brush the walls, as if committing every square inch to memory. As if. Hermann hopes, at least. Hermann hears the creak of the weary stairs and the ceiling above him bow in the slightest and Newton is in his room again. Hermann leaves him, because he’s too exhausted to go up and down the staircase again, and much too tired to prevent Newton from finding his package before he will have the change to give it to him. It’s inevitable anyway, because sometimes Hermann thinks Newton knows Hermann better than Hermann knows Hermann. He serves the pasta. 

Calling for Newton he sets the plates on the table, turning them so the chips in the ceramic aren’t as prominent. A distant response is all he receives, so, with a sigh filled not with contempt but discern, he goes to Newton.

“It’s getting cold,” Hermann murmurs from the platform of the stairs, propping himself up against the door frame. Newton is stood in front of Hermann’s blackboard-turned wall of chalked mathematics. He is tracing the strokes of Hermann’s handwriting in the form of variables and asymptotes, noting the irregularities in when the utensil breaks and leaves a spatter of white dust where the expression should equal undefined. Newton is staring, unblinking, eyes moving over the unfinished law of sines and the smudges in the theory of relativity, memorizing the formulas like he’ll need them to operate a weapon. 

Newton tells him he’s brilliant in a voice Hermann feels is close to breaking, breathy and pitched. Hermann is silent. He doesn’t need to say anything. After ten years of coexisting they both know this. Newton’s arms fall slack against his body, fingernails digging into the palm of his hand, willing himself not to cry. He knows if he cries it makes this all _real_ and as much as Newton seems to like the brand seared into his back in the shape of 13-138 he is scared. He is scared for more than his country because this, to him, is bigger than a war. He is scared for Hermann, he is even goddamn scared for his good for nothing father (the description always fit him better) and he is scared for himself. Newton Geiszler is eighteen and he does not want to die. He doesn’t agree with the posters plastered to the sidewalk; wouldn’t he _much_ _rather_ die on the battlefield than anywhere else? No. 

He would choose dying old and boring and worn out and with Hermann over a rush of blood to the head any day. No.

Newton turns, stopping as his shoulder brushes Hermann’s. He is faced opposite but Hermann knows how his face must look. For Newton’s sake, he pretends he doesn’t see the tear staining his cheek. Hermann inhales, heart beating a little faster as he pushes the intrusive thought that this may be the last time he is here with him down. He swallows the thought. He wishes it away. If not for himself for Newton. 

 

They eat, and it is silent. Almost. Newton whispers those three words and Hermann waits to say them back, gives him the package instead. It means the same, either way. Even if his lips hadn’t ghosted them on the doorstep, it means the same. 

Newton doesn’t open the package then. It makes it real. To pull the strings loose will make him cry, too, and then both realnesses combine into one big reality Newton doesn’t want to handle. Doesn’t think he is strong enough to. Instead, he tucks it into his pocket. Hermann isn’t offended. Honestly, if Newton _had_ opened it, Hermann knows his emotions would have betrayed him. Newton changes the subject.  
“I hear there’s a star shower soon,” Newton says. “You love those, Hermann.” Hermann doesn’t look at him. He knows about the meteor shower, and he’s shared the past five years worth with Newton. It felt wrong to be alone, because without Newton comparing the constellations to his freckles it would be silent and Hermann would have only his thoughts.

“Yeah,” is all Hermann says, because he fears if he opens his mouth for longer  _ I only loved them because of you  _ will spill over his lips. “Yeah,” Hermann repeats, softer. Newton extends a hand from where he sits diagonal from Hermann and bunches the fabric of his sweater in his fist. Hermann still refuses to look at him, but Newton is stubborn and he is not, will never be, deterred by Hermann’s seeming disinterest. He knows him better than that.

“Even if it’s cloudy for me,” Newton begins, feeling the knot form in his throat, “it’s the same sky.” Hermann gives up his facade and looks at him.

“It’s the same sky, Hermann,” Newton says, and Hermann can feel his hands shaking where his sweater is balled in his hand. “Look at the stars and I will be, too.” Hermann hears,  _ you won’t be alone _ . Newton’s grip relaxes and he moves his fingers to lace delicately with Hermann’s. Newton’s hand is not shaking anymore, and he is moving circles over the back of Hermann’s hand with his thumb. He laughs, quiet, breathy.

“Your hands were always so cold,” he says. Again, past tense. Again, a heartstring snapping.

“Poor circulation,” Hermann supplies. Newton laughs again. It’s a sad laugh, though, and not the kind Hermann likes on Newton. 

 

When Newton says goodnight Hermann can still feel his warm fingertips on his wrist like they had been imprinted there. He hopes the tingling never subsides. He doesn’t want to lose the part of Newton he loves best; the part that’s his.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw note: eating disorder
> 
> other note: there are a looot of song lyric references in the dialogue. point some out in the comments and u win my luv forevr

Hermann forces himself to see Newton off at the train station. Even if he is standing next to Mr. Geiszler, even if the air is acrid with sweat. He stands back as Newton’s father helps Newton board, fixing the cap on his head. Hermann feels utterly  _ helpless _ and he hates himself for this. He isn’t the one on the train. The peach pit in his chest seems lodged there now, present when he slept last night and present now. Hermann doesn’t think it’ll fade. Get worse, become tolerable or perhaps be such a constant Hermann doesn’t feel it anymore. He doubts this, though. 

Newton is kneeling in the leathered seats of the train car, balancing so he leans out the window. He and the hundreds of other boys around him are waving to family, friends. Lovers. Newton does not blend with the rose-cheeked, ocean eyed boys who can’t  _ wait _ to load a gun and who are unaware that dying is for  _ real _ . They will not come back. Newton is framed in the center, by tufts of blonde hair and white shirts as if he is matted in gold. A Renaissance painting. From there it became a beautiful tragedy, bearable only when romanticized. 

He stands out not just for his curls or for the freckles that dot the bridge of his nose, not just for his dark eyelashes casting shadows upon his cheekbones. But for the way his lips pull into a tight line, the solemnity of his expression starkly contrasting the rest. He is waving but he isn’t seeing his father, isn’t seeing the crowd. Newton plasters a smile on when his name is called out, perfect German soldier that he is. Hermann feels like he’s suffocating, the chants of  _ dein Vaterland ist in gefahr  _ as hands pressing over his mouth, stopping his breath. Hermann is suddenly hyperaware of the peach pit and the fabric of Mr. Geiszler’s blazer pressed into his arm. He can’t  _ breathe _ . 

The theoretical hit list Mr. Geiszler keeps no longer matters. “Newton,” Hermann calls, and he can’t remember the last time he shouted like this. 

Newton’s eyes lose their glaze and instead, as he looks at Hermann, they hold such despair, such heartbreak that Hermann stops caring about his no-crying policy. Because this  _ was _ real, and crying would not end the war and crying would not stop the train from taking Newton from him. He barely notices the warm tears decorating his cheeks. There are too many people for Hermann to push through the crowd and take Newton’s hand through the window or he would.

“Write to me,” Hermann shouts, though he feels that he’s said three other words. Newton smiles. For real.  _ God. _ Hermann is lightheaded. 

“Always,” Newton mouths, syllables like honey, a promise Hermann wishes he could listen to forever. 

The train begins to puff smoke, gears turning against one another. Hermann doesn’t even register the scorn on Mr. Geiszler’s face because this is about Hermann and Newton. Nothing else matters but them in this moment, in Hermann’s life. In Newton’s, too, but he’s too proud to admit this.

Newton’s figure fades in the distance, opaque mist clouding Hermann’s vision. Hermann’s throat is sore. Out of speaking so loudly or out of melancholia he does not know. Is there a difference? Mathematics couldn’t solve it. He knows this. He knows this but he also knows he will return to his room and frantically erase the marks on the black board and start anew. Hermann turns from the train tracks.

 

For the first weeks, Newton feels like he is living within a dream. He moves his feet but they are heavy, weighted down by the downy of sleep and unawareness. Newton can’t trick his mind into being okay. He soothes the wound with gauze in the form of dirtied paper and ink blotches and wax stamps imprinted with bay leaves. He brought all this himself. Hermann’s package lies untouched in the canvas bag that becomes all of Newton’s belongings. He is boiled down to a sack full of rations and a parcel as the last piece of his home as he once knew it. He is defined by mud encrusted boots and gashes to the arm and the ability to suck it  _ up _ because suffering is part of this job. To this Newton scoffs. He never signed up for this.

Newton writes Hermann every day. It’s almost like keeping a diary except it’s terribly, terribly depressing to think of letters to someone’s person as something as evanescent as daily life. Newton wants Hermann to know  _ everything _ and deep down Newton knows, yes, this is his own way of bringing Hermann to him but he ignores that truth and crosses his ts. 

_ I love you the only way I know _ , Newton writes, knowing wholly that this sentiment, like the dozen before, would be in letters left unsent, sealed with spit and left decaying in the breast pocket of the jacket Hermann hates so terribly. Newton is saving the wax seals for a letter he knows Hermann will be proud of. Newton stops after this line, hovering the pen above the space where another confession would subsist.

It isn’t that he doesn’t want to write. It is that it’s painful to admit these words to himself and more painful to record it on paper that was Hermann’s to begin with. Hermann’s gift becomes the antecedent of Newton’s guilt and he wishes, sourly, he could rid himself of the memory so neither of them are suffering. He assumes the opposite party is under the same duress yet Newton thinks himself a fool for this. Hermann is dealing. Newton is mistaken if he lets himself believe this.

Newton is mistaken if he mitigates his nightmares with the notion that Hermann is okay. In fact he is anything  _ but _ , his blackboard covered in what is every theoretical (hypothetical, to Hermann’s dismay) way Newton could avoid an unmarked grave. Each morning he starts anew, each night before his dreams of Newton torment his mind and ache his heart. 

 

Hermann sends the first letter. His hands are shaking when he writes it, shaking when he seals it, shaking when he, albeit hesitantly, slips the envelope into the army mailbox. It could never reach him, Hermann thinks, turning his back to the line of sisters, mothers, and wives that accumulate around the list tacked to the bulletin board. Hermann thinks these things perpetually, though he is wholly and completely aware they make him feel worse, make his peach pit heart tear through skin in agony. The list is another thing Hermann loves to avidly avoid. A list of names, regimens, numbers. Those men who won’t ever receive letters, and not just for the poor excuse of a postal system.

So Hermann decides not to waste his time. Indulging in daydreams is always better. It isn’t much different now. Hermann daydreams about Newton now and then just like always. The only change in this protocol is the miles between them. He isn’t a window away anymore. He might never be again. Hermann knows that soldiers are not the same when they come home. Newton may not be  _ his _ Newton. The part of him Hermann firmly thought he had may be lost after all. 

Hermann distracts himself with the workshop. Each morning he sits on the picked fabric seats of the short-distance train to Berlin. The walk is brisk and he clutches his bag close to his chest for fear of the wind plucking anything from it. He can feel his nose reddening and his eyes prickling with tears from the cold. Hermann’s once-combed hair is now disheveled. He feels like Newton. Breakfast has been long forgotten for more than one reason; the expense and the fact that Hermann’s appetite has all but disappeared in the recent weeks. He figures it is better not to eat anyway. It saves money. It saves rations for soldiers. Hermann is fine. 

Outside the windows smeared with fingerprints, fields of grains and weeping willows streak by like star trails; beautiful and all too fast, almost impossible for the eye to focus on. From the timetable Hermann knows it takes an hour, sometimes more, but it seems five minutes at most some days. Maybe it’s because the memory of traveling to town with Newton keeps him company or maybe it’s that he drifts to sleep halfway through almost each time. Both go hand in hand, Hermann thinks. Sometimes Hermann swears he sees Newton sitting on the seat across from him, cigarette resting between his lips. Each time, Newton asks Hermann about the bakery in Berlin, the one Hermann would spend very literally his whole month’s funds on, the one with the egg breads for less than two Euro. He visited so often the women in the kitchen sometimes sent Hermann off with free milk, too. In Hermann’s mind Newton asks him if he’ll buy him poppy seed cake. Hermann, of course, agrees. Anything. 

But then Hermann shakes his head and it is not Newton, cross-legged and sans-nicotine. How could it be when their shoulders aren’t pressed together? Hermann promises himself he will go to the bakery today. He hopes poppy seeds aren’t too expensive now. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2: Newton is trying to say “You’re here by choice?” but he says “You here...the choice?”  
> Author’s note: 100% when I wrote Hermann picking up the phone my heart leaped. God. I love them.

It’s winter now. At the start of his time here Newton scratched tally marks into the side of the bunker in hopes of remembering the months, the days. But now, all he knows is that it’s winter. The date is long forgotten, no determination between November 8th and December 21st. Even so, Newton keeps a diary. Nothing much, nothing fancy or eloquent enough to become some famous war diary of a young soldier, but all the same he keeps it close. 

Each day he writes  _ something _ , whether that be that he ate that day or that a bullet had just about grazed his ankle again or that he misses Hermann. It’s mostly the latter. 

The few months he knows the other soldiers in his regiment he feels as if he’s made no friends, just people mirroring himself - reticent roommates. Newton does know that he is the last person out of twenty-three to be seriously injured. He finds himself lucky, but he hears the whispers before the candle wicks are cinched at night. Adelar, whose left leg had been all but disintegrated, Hugo, who has breathed so much gas his lungs are collapsing, Erik, whose eyes are clouded from toxins; the somber list continues. It’s only a matter of time for Newton. No one is this lucky. 

 

When it happens, it feels like a dream. He doesn’t feel the bullet shot clean through his shoulder despite the lack of novocaine. He feels his neck snap forward from the pressure, but there is no pain. His vision only blurs when he sees the blood, a trickle of scarlet staining the olive canvas. He blinks once, twice, presses the opposite hand to his shoulder. The wound is warm and yet Newton is colder than ever. His left arm is limp, fingernails turning blue.  _ God _ , Newton thinks. He wishes he had a blanket. 

He still can’t quite  _ feel _ it, but he knows the bullet is still lodged in his shoulder. There’s no exit wound. He doesn’t remember falling to his knees, but he is not there long before Newton is hoisted upon a stretcher, the vaguely familiar face of a soldier above his own. 

“You’re going to be okay,” he says, and Newton tries to nod but he can’t. He nods in his mind but his head won’t physically follow the order.  _ Shock _ , Newton thinks.

There is indistinct conversation; no, it isn’t  _ indistinct _ but Newton’s ears are ringing too terribly to hear it. He tries to read their lips to no avail. He closes his eyes. For the first time in months, Newton lets himself be tired. Lets himself sleep.

 

He wakes up gasping for breath in a linoleum floored hospital, so sterile the antiseptic burns his eyes. He is alone, save for the clicking steps of a nurse surveying the hallways. Hallways of whom? There is barely anyone here. 

Newton’s jacket has been removed and draped over the back of the chair by his bedside.  13-138. The one has been massacred, now looking more like a broken line - two parts of white thread separated by one part of a bullet hole. Newton grimaces. He thinks of what Hermann told him. Thirteen, for the thirteenth disciple. It is so ironic that Newton wants to laugh; he became the one betrayed, not the one betraying. His heart settles from what he hadn’t realized was a heightened pace when he sees the brown paper parcel tied with baker’s string propped against the chair. Newton reaches to take it but is met with a shooting pain up his shoulder, into his neck, across his forehead. 

As if the nurse is watching him, which, in hindsight, she probably was, the nurse hurries to Newton’s bedside, pushing some drug into his IV and handing him a pill. 

“ _ Prenez _ ,” She commands nervously, and Newton starts. She doesn’t speak German. Where  _ is  _ he? Is that French? Newton mumbles a thank you in what he thinks is proper and swallows the pill. It’s bitter and reminds him of chalk. Which, in turn, as things always do, remind him of Hermann. His stomach drops. 

The nurse is young. Her hair is black, tucked into the cap brandishing the red cross. Newton wonders if she has been forced to do this as he has. He wants to ask, but he doesn’t know enough French, if anything more than  _ merci _ . Newton tries anyway - he’s too tired and too lonely and too in pain to care if he speaks incorrectly. 

“ _ Vous….ici _ ,” he begins, feeling his cheeks redden. “ _ Le choix _ ?” 2 The nurse giggles. Newton is embarrassed. She replies in broken German - Newton figures this is what his French must sound like.

“No,” she says, “I sent here.” From talking with her, despite the language barrier, Newton discovers that he is twenty minutes from the Polish border in Wriezen. He’s an hour from Berlin. Two hours from Hermann. Suddenly he has an idea. 

“ _ Téléphoner ami? _ ” Newton thinks she understands. She nods, pats his hand, and scurries into another corridor. She returns moments later with a beige round-dialed telephone, cord tangled about her arms. She kneels down to plug it in beside Newton, setting the device by his side. Newton realizes his hands are shaking and he hopes the nurse doesn’t notice anything  _ too _ acutely. He ignores her stare and dials Hermann’s home number. He wishes to any God there is that he’s home. He’ll pick up. One, two, three rings and Newton remembers that he might be at work. The nurse might know the number for there, right?

But Newton does not have to ask. After five rings and dwindling hope, Hermann’s voice sounds on the other end of the line. 

“Gottlieb residence, hello?”

“Hermann,” Newton says, unable to keep from smiling, voice breathy and breaking at the sound of Hermann. After months. Hermann. 

There is a pause and Newton thinks that Hermann is crying. “Newton,” he says, a mix of such happiness and such melancholy that Newton wants to hold him more than ever. 

“Wh-where are you?” Hermann whispers, just short of incredulous. Newton doesn’t want Hermann to worry, so he lies. 

“We’re stopped over in Kiel,” Newton says, softly. “At a resthouse and I thought I’d call you.” He knows Hermann can hear him smiling, and he can’t help it. No matter what, they were both  _ alive _ . Hermann echoes the thought.

“You’re alive,” he breathes, and Newton swears he hears him sniffling. He barely recognizes the tears on his cheeks, too. “Are you getting my letters?”

With this Newton freezes. With guilt, with something close to agony. “Yes,” he starts, “I have.” He leaves out the part where he doesn’t open them, because he knows if he does he will lose his facade of strength, his cover of a German soldier. “And I wrote you back,” he adds, “but I haven’t got the chance to mail them.’

Hermann seems satisfied. In that moment he truly did not care whether he’d written back. Just that he was here was enough. 

“How long will you be in Kiel?” Hermann asks, twisting the cord of the phone. 

“Oh,” Newton says, “Only a day or two, at most. Then I return.”

“Oh,” Hermann repeats dimly. 

There’s static in the silence, but there’s something comforting in listening to the breathing of the other. Hermann speaks next. 

“Are you hurt?” his voice is so fragile Newton hates to lie again. So he sweetens it, tells a half-truth instead. It’s better for the both of them. 

“Only a little,” Newton confesses, “I got hit in the arm but I’m almost healed now.” 

Hermann hums. “That’s good.”

Silence again.

“Hermann,” Newton begins, voice wavering, hand clenching around the telephone. “I miss you.”  _ I love you _ . Newton wishes the nurse would leave suddenly. He looks at her and she seems to get the message, because she bows to him slightly and makes herself busy with another patient. 

“I miss you too, Newton,” Hermann says. “So much.” Newton he wishes he could listen to him pronouncing those two syllables of his name forever. His heart feels both empty and full at the same time. 

“And,” Newton says, forcing himself to push the words he writes every day from his lips. “I love you.” It feels different now that the words aren’t so common for them. Hermann doesn’t tell him this when he boards the train to see his grandparents anymore, Newton doesn’t tell Hermann this when he has had a rough day. It’s different now; it’s sacred. 

“I love you, too, Newton,” Hermann says. They are both choking up now. 

“I have to go, okay?” Newton mumbles, worried that if he speaks for any longer he’ll have a full on meltdown. Hermann says okay. Neither one knows whether to hang up first or not, and in the end it is Newton pulling the phone from the wall that ends their conversation. He thinks it might have been a mistake. More than a happy accident - a purposeful sorrow that Newton may take into battle as an encouragement or a token of how much he wishes to be home.

The nurse brings Newton a handkerchief. 

“ _ Un ami _ ?” She says, a smile on her lips. Newton laughs softly. He doesn’t have to reply. Instead he turns over, pressing the side of his face into the pillow to stop his tears. He rations his breaths in fear of aggravating the monitor looming beside his bed and tries to sleep. But sleeping is not  _ resting _ when his dreams are riddled with nightmares and now Hermann’s voice.  _ I love you _ , he thinks. Newton has told him this but he hopes he understands. These words are the only constant remaining in Newton’s life. Hermann  _ has _ to know.  _ I love you,  _ he repeats. Always. 


	5. Chapter 5

The factory is not so bad. Sure, the lingering scent of glue and the tang of copper make Hermann’s head spin, but comparatively, the greying barn is a luxury. Hermann’s day consists of mundane tasks in this order: building, soldering, lunch break, soldering, building. His lunch break, frequently spent in an alcove Hermann wholly believes is all his own, is longer than probably deemed necessary, but he doesn’t take it for granted. He only wishes that he had something other than  _ Antigone _ .

Not that he doesn’t like the play; he  _ loves _ it, in fact. But it is a certain similarity between Newton and Socrates’ rich, lurid tragedy that hits a little too close for comfort. And it makes Hermann wonder who the protagonist is in his own life. It certainly doesn’t feel that it is himself. He’s always been dependant upon the livelihoods of others; Hermann just figures that he would be a terrible protagonist. He’s too cynical yet too forgiving, too easy to trust yet always the first to leave. Hermann doesn’t need a psychologist to tell him he leaves before the other person has a chance: he doesn’t want to be forgotten behind, so instead he does the forgetting. 

It is different with Newton, though. He doesn’t want to leave him. He couldn’t bring himself to break his own heart like that. They seem to exist in a paradox of their own; incomprehensible to anyone else. They exist in mathematical formulas and in Socrates and in cigarettes, 13-138, handwritten letters, and poppy seed cake - physical representations of lives that barely singe the grass, barely fumigate a forest with the smoke of lost cause existence. 

Hermann will be forgotten when he is gone. His memory will not be upheld by Newton’s father or the baker who sets aside the bottle of milk for him. He will deliquesce into the universe, a hopeful incandescent body gravitationally fixed to the tether of the universe.

But Newton,  _ Newton _ , will become the meteorites that Hermann adores so dearly. He will be the sort of shooting star that compels children to wish upon it, to squeeze their eyes shut and whisper their prayers to what is really just a fragment of matter. Newton is memorable because he is stardust incarnate; from his dotted cheeks to the Milky Way eyes behind his glasses. He is a quasar on his own. 

Outstanding.

Outshining. 

Hermann looks at the stars each night and his heart twists for Newton. Thinking of him is happy yet his absence is sadder than the former. The joy is not a high enough to equate to the sadness, not enough to mask it completely. 

 

He doesn’t go to the factory the next day. It’s Tuesday, and he sleeps in. Hermann has fallen asleep folded over a book:  _ Advancements in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 3 _ . When he wakes the cheap ink has stuck to him, partially imprinting the word  _ telescope _ on his cheek. He scrubs it off in the bathroom, glancing up into the mirror only to be disgusted by his own appearance. Hermann’s cheek is red from the rough fabric of the towel, and the purple insets under his eyes make him look as if he’d been punched. Twice. 

Hermann’s face is just short of  _ emaciated _ , and he exhales sourly as he remembers the slice of bread in his jacket pocket. Still wrapped, untouched. It’s as if the peach pit in his chest has extended to his stomach as well. Hermann can’t remember when it was when he ate last and he is so numb it doesn’t phase him in the slightest. He’s figured out that after a few days the clawing at his stomach stops and the acid in his esophagus settles. He tells himself he’s rationing. Helping. What he ends up as is rationing his breaths, saving them for when he’ll really need them.

He finds himself camped out by the telephone, a one-time occurance turning into a habit after Newton’s first phone call. Some hope within Hermann professes his need to glue himself to the wall beside the device, fingers curling with the cord, as if he’d be able to feel Newton’s touch through it. Hermann likes to imagine that the infrequent sparking is Newton thinking of him. 

For this Hermann feels as if this war has turned his brain to mush. He is a  _ scholar _ , a  _ mathematician,  _ and whatever efforts he could have once contributed are wasted upon brain-cell-killing chemicals at a factory in middle-of-nowhere Germany. He can be of  _ use _ , but instead he is lumped into the rest of society, another speck in a conglomerate of population records. A name on a list, just above the numbers that Newton has become. 

The knock on the door startles Hermann from a nap he doesn’t realize he’s fallen into. It’s curious, that. He does not simply get visitors. He gets Newton, and that isn’t a possibility right now, though Hermann runs the simulation of that probability through in his head anyway. He opens the door and is greeted by a Geiszler, but not the one he was hoping desperately for. 

“Gottlieb,” Newton’s father says, and suddenly Hermann feels ice cold. He clears his throat and stands up a little taller. He can’t recall a time where Newton’s father has referred to him amicably.

“Good evening,” Hermann enunciates, moving back to invite Mr. Geiszler in, but the man makes no move to take Hermann up on this offer. Hermann swallows.

Instead, Mr. Geiszler extends a closed hand, expecting Hermann to reach out his own. The latter, however, does not get this memo and stands before him still, slightly confused. Mr. Geiszler commands him to do as he’s told, and Hermann balances his weight against the door, having left his cane upstairs, and meets Mr. Geiszler’s hand.

“Newton would have,” he begins, then corrects, “Newton  _ will _ want you to have this.” There is something more than the incorrect tense of Mr. Geiszler’s words that leave Hermann unsettled. He says nothing, blinking and letting the cool metal of what feels like a necklace fall into his palm. He doesn’t dare look at it now. Hermann slides his hand and it into his pocket, only briefly breaking eye contact with Newton’s father. For the first time, Hermann feels that he doesn’t resent him. Doesn’t wish he was halfway to Siberia without contact to his son. Maybe, Hermann thinks, just maybe, Hermann is all that is left of Newton here. Mr. Geiszler misses him, too. Somehow, it’s not qualified to Hermann. It’s typical and so ironic that he’ll only miss his son when he’s gone; when his life is pinned to the barrel of a 7.92 Mauser rifle.

All Hermann says is thank you. Mr. Geiszler begins to leave, and Hermann watches him walk back to the cobbled street outside his door. 

“Thank you,” Mr. Geiszler echoes. He pauses for a moment before adding, “Hermann.” It is uncharacteristic and completely stuns Hermann. He smiles faintly. He never has and never will need Mr. Geiszler’s approval for  _ anything _ , but it feels nice to have perhaps moved to the ‘less dangerous’ side of the list of Things-Newton’s-Father-Hates. 

 

When Hermann is alone again he uncurls his fingers from what he doesn’t realize he’s been holding so tightly. It is a locket. He recognizes it immediately; it’s the locket Newton wore close to every day when they were younger. Truthfully, Hermann had wondered about it but never summoned enough confidence to ask. He figures he doesn’t have that choice now. He picks it open carefully, fearful to break a gift like this. 

Engraved on the inside of the locket is a poem Hermann knows vaguely, a sort of nostalgic remembrance. He knows it from  _ somewhere _ . 

 

_ Ich bin bei dir, du seist auch noch so ferne, Du bist mir nah! Die Sonne sinkt, bald leuchten mir die Sterne. O wärst du da! _

 

It hits him. It’s Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; it’s classic. It’s Newton. He used to quote Goethe so often; at first he peppered his language with poetry to sound smarter than the other boys in their class but it quickly turned into a genuine infatuation. On one of their first rooftop escapades Newton had confided in Hermann, telling him his mother had loved Goethe.

Hermann’s heart races in panic as he realizes this locket was Newton’s mother’s. It’s clear now, and suddenly Hermann feels completely unworthy. He wishes Mr. Geiszler wouldn’t have bestowed this upon him. It’s a weighty thing, something worthy of more than a three minute conversation in the foyer. 

He imagines the scene in his mind. Newton’s mother gifting the very metal he cradles in his fingers now to Newton. Him reading the excerpt from the poem. Never  _ imagining _ how much those words will carry later. Hermann thinks of Mr. Geiszler again. The interaction was odd, Hermann admits, and something  _ still _ does not sit right with him. 

 

It isn’t until the light in the living room flickers once, twice, then is gone that Hermann knows. Mr. Geiszler is leaving. The light was one of Hermann’s odd comforts, falling into the same category as logarithms or meteorites or petrichor. The last is, as informed of proudly by a thirteen year old Newton, is the scent of earth after rain. The living room light’s disappearance prods at Hermann’s peach pit. He sits by his windowsill, hardly concerned about the rain beginning to fall and moisten the floorboards beneath him. The locket is clasped around his neck, charm settling into the dip between Hermann’s collarbones. He is staring at the wall of chalked numerals yet gleaning nothing from them. 

How many days has it been since his routine of train to factory to building to home? 

Three?

Four?

Time is all Hermann longed for yet it slipped through his fingers faster than he has time to process what is happening. To him. To Germany. To Newton. It’s too fast, yet his limbs move slowly, as if submerged in water, drowning him in bittersweet. 

 

He doesn’t know why exactly Mr. Geiszler leaves. Maybe it’s the pain of seeing Newton’s room empty each morning. Hermann sure knows he feels that, too. For someone who had once been a man so  _ proud _ of his war-bound son he now seems more shrivelled and empty than Newton has ever been. Mr. Geiszler did not appreciate his son the way he was meant to. Newton is rare, Hermann thinks, fingering the locket at his throat. 

He is not someone one can simply run from. Hermann knows that Mr. Geiszler will not be back. He is a coward with a heart so blackened he can leave a home empty for his son to come home to. Does he not imagine Newton’s face when the fridge is empty save for a pound of flour? Does he not see the anguish building in the lines on his son’s forehead when his father’s once-room is beadboard? 

Hermann doesn’t know why Mr. Geiszler leaves. But whatever reason he has fabricated to justify his departure pales in comparison to courage. 

 

Rain beats against the windowpane but there is no will left in Hermann to close it. He lets the droplets dot his skin, imagining the freckles he likes to trace on Newton in place of them. He can come home to here, Hermann thinks, eyes sliding closed. If home is where the heart is, home for Newton was Hermann. Hermann falls asleep smiling, locket safely between his forefinger and his thumb. Home is here.

  
  


_ Poem translation to English: _ I am with you, you are still so far away, you are close to me! The sun is sinking, soon the stars will shine. Oh, would you be there!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please let me know if u like this i rlly love to write this bt i am Anxious at the attention H thank u all for reading i rlly rlly appreciate it heart emoji x10


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen to the weltschmerz playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/user/raviolimother/playlist/36U1XvLVIvy5qMlTWeS5i2

 

Newton is pulled from the front lines. Not like he fights to stay there, but he still feels the twinge of disapproval when he is called to the commander’s office. 

“Geiszler,” There is no venom in the commander’s voice; nothing to denote negativity and instead it feels as if the commander is as exhausted as Newton. His head hurts. He has been back on the battlefield for just shy of a month, he thinks, and he normalizes the ringing in his ears because who isn’t a little shaken up?

The commander presses a red button on the recorder in front of him and the tape begins to roll, clicking against the gears turning. 

“Geiszler, 13-138,” he repeats. “January 19th, 1915.”

January 19th? Newton’s eyebrows knit. Today is his birthday. He swallows. The commander may have noticed his momentary hesitation because he writes something on the cream paper smoothed out on the desk before him. Newton thinks of Hermann. He is suddenly aware of the envelopes inside his breast pocket. They put pressure on his chest like a vice, restraining his heart so tightly that Newton can hear the heartbeat in his ears. 

He barely remembers any words that tumble from his lips during his evaluation but he thinks he does pass - if only barely. It isn’t hard to do this when the majority of soldiers’ brain are pulverized to paled oatmeal by shellshock. He thinks he passes. He’s confident. Why shouldn’t he be? Newton shakes any doubt. He is nineteen today. 

By nineteen, he thought he would be in France or in England, ties cut with Germany and Hermann’s fingers intertwined with his own.

By nineteen, he thought he would be independent, self-sufficient. 

By nineteen, he thought his and Hermann’s house, because of  _ course _ they’d share a home, would smell of the poppyseed cake he loves so much. 

But now, his only thought of the future is if he’ll make it to twenty. 

On the walk back to what he’s called home for the better part of two months, Newton thinks of the the future Hermann would have wanted. It was his idea to move to England in the first place. There’d been a flyer he’d seen plastered to a sidestreet in Berlin detailing positions for mathematicians in London. Newton remembers that day fondly. When Hermann grew too tired to continue their mapping of every corridor and narrow walkway in the city, Newton pulled him into the alley way. They sat with their backs pressed against the wall, a damp chill seeping through the cotton collared shirts they wore.

“I want to go,” Hermann had said, grasping for Newton’s hand.  _ But _ . He left that part unspoken. Newton could hear the fear in his voice, see how his breathing stilled for just a moment before he exhaled. He didn’t want to be alone. If Newton was being honest, if Hermann left him thousands of miles behind, he thought his lungs might collapse, too.

“I’ll come with you,” Newton said, not expecting the sudden pressure on his hand where Hermann squeezed it. Newton moved his thumb in circles over Hermann’s, feeling his heart rate decrease in increments. Hermann leaned close to Newton, resting his head atop his shoulder. This, for them, was nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it was their ordinary. 

“You’d do that for me?” Hermann said, breathy. Newton hummed an  _ of course _ against the mop of dark hair leaned into his side. 

“I’m doing it with you.”

 

The memory makes his heart numb. Newton can almost smell the lavender lacing Hermann’s hair. Can almost feel the soft press of Hermann’s lips against his own when Hermann had placed his hand gentle on his jaw and guided them together. He brushes his thumb over his lower lip. He takes a cigarette from his pocket and lights it.

 

That night he dreams of Hermann. They are thirteen. Newton knows this memory indefinitely. He’s copied it to the backs of his hands, to the insides of his eyelids. To his pericardial. This fleeting moment tethers the freckles across his back together, collecting them  and tying them up with a neat ribbon of baker’s twine. It’s different this time, though, because when the series of events is replayed Newton is removed. His current self is removed, that is. 

He is watching himself like a ghost, and he rapidly pats his chest to ensure that no, he is not transparent, and no, he is not dead yet. He watches himself, stifling laughter at the way his glasses slid down his nose and how he tried so  _ desperately _ to look cool when he pushed them up. Younger Newton breathes a cloud of smoke when he laughs, and younger Hermann plucks the cigarette from where it sits between his pointer and middle finger. He snubs it out on the roof where they sit, and Newton feels the twinge of homesickness again. He watches as the scene he’d rewound so often in his brain plays out as if he is reliving it. 

Newton swears he can feel the pads of Hermann’s fingers on his cheek just as he had the first time. 

The dream turns sour too quickly. Hermann wants to stop it, to go back and study Newton’s freckles again, draw lines from his forehead to his collarbone, push his glasses back from where they’d slid down the slope of his nose. Now Newton is in a car driven by someone Hermann can’t make out. Is it his father? Is it Hermann? He can’t tell. It’s killing him. Where’s he going? 

Hermann tries to cry out, “But I just got you back!”

He is screaming but he can’t hear his own voice. Newton is smiling and waving and Hermann is choking. This is all wrong. This was not how it is supposed to be. 

Hermann wakes up gasping for air, linen sheets balled in his fists.

He moves his thumb over his bottom lip, ghosting the now distant touch. 

God. 

Hermann tries to smudge the last part of the dream out like chalk and concentrate on the first. 

He hopes Newton thinks of this, too, and, above all, he hopes that when he meets Newton at the train station when he comes home, it’ll be just like the movies. Just like in those pictures they’d sneak into in Berlin, the films that clattered in their canisters in the back of the cinema and intermittently had to be fixed by some young staff member. Hermann pictures it now to soothe the ache in his chest.

Newton steps onto the platform and he sees Hermann, though he doesn’t know how through the crowd of people, but Hermann likes to think that he’d know him anywhere. So Newton finds him. Before a word is spoken Newton presses a kiss to the corner of Hermann’s mouth, arms thrown around his neck. And Hermann is holding his waist tight, as if Newton would disintegrate if he let him from his arms.

In his daydream Hermann is crying and it takes him a moment to realize that the tears are real.

_ We’d be like movie stars _ , Hermann thinks, half to himself and half to Newton. He sits up and glances out his window. Ivy is weaving its way up the bricks, curling its limbs around the latches of Newton’s window. He turns his back. 

Hermann doesn’t go to the factory the whole week. He’s scraping by but at this point he’s so far from caring he might as well move away, too. But he can’t. If he can’t stay for himself, he’ll stay for Newton. He promises himself this. 

Sleeping in becomes part of his routine. His hair has grown longer and is becoming more of a mess than it started but he can’t be bothered to do anything about it. He lets the mail pile under the slit in the front door. What he’s least proud of is that he starts smoking. 

He convinces himself it’s because of the lack of his own personal ashtray. Hermann hated the tang on Newton’s lips for so long yet now that he’s been stripped of it he wants it back so terribly. Hermann has become a paradox; an oxymoron. He’s become everything his crisp persona hated once. He can’t criticize himself for this. Newton’s changed, too. 

They aren’t stargazing Hermann and Newton anymore. They’re an exoskeleton of the two; a replica that almost nearly but not quite matches the originals. Hermann pictures his name etched into a headstone. The though is enough to make him gag. The birthdate is clear but the death is blurred because he can’t place when he first started feeling hollow. He suspects it was far before the moment he’s thinking of now. 

Hermann Gottlieb is nineteen and a life of greatness is ahead of him. Was. Once. Hermann is nineteen now, and he is nineteen eternally. 

He decides not to think of Newton. It would hurt him more. He sent a letter out last week for his birthday. It will be the last. What’s the use in pouring his heart onto parchment if it’s not reciprocated. Hermann feels as if a piece of himself is gone more than usual. The peach pit in his chest has grown roots around his lungs, his stomach. Hermann is an enigma even he can’t solve anymore. This was not worthy of chalk because white powder would not  _ solve anything _ . It would do nothing but make the misery happy. 

The view of Newton’s window begins to make him angry and he doesn’t know why, but he hates the feeling. He feels sick to his stomach, like he’s going to vomit the invisible contents inside. 

He draws the blinds in his bedroom window. 


	7. Chapter 7

 

When Newton wakes his ear is bleeding. A carnation-shaped droplet stains his pillow and he stares at it dumbly. 

“You, too?” Echoes from across the room. Newton knows that voice; he knows the gravelly tone and he knows the faded German accent lacing his vowels. But he can’t place who it belongs to. Newton says nothing to avoid embarrassment and because he’s not sure what he means.  _ Me, too _ ?

“It’s not just a concussion,” the voice begins, stepping out of his curtain of shadows that once shaded his face. Newton’s head hurts, partially from the bleeding that he supposes is coming from it and partially because he cannot remember for the  _ life _ of him what this boy’s name is. He knows its something H. He can only think of Hermann, though he knows him. He’ll always know him. 

Weakly, Newton tries to start speaking a name as if it would come to him with the roll of his tongue. The other finishes for him.

“Hugo? Yeah, Newton, it’s me.”  _ Hugo _ (of course. Newton knows this. He’s inhaled an amount of gas so large his voice cracks with every word) says. Newton swallows but he says nothing. “They told you it was a concussion, right?”

Newton nods, moving his hand to massage the side of his head. 

Hugo hums, coughs, and sits beside Newton. He smooths the cotton sheet that separates the two, taking all too much of a sudden attention to detail as he seems to be counting the threads by sight. Newton doesn’t talk to the other boys much. No one does. It’s glib but they all figure they’ll be dead sooner or later so what is the point in making more connections? There isn’t. It’s just another person to miss and another shallow grave to dig. In fact, Newton can’t remember a time where he had talked to Hugo for more than a command. 

“You’re going to die,” Hugo says, and he doesn’t seem particularly upset about it. Honestly, though, Newton kind of isn’t, either. “Or you’ll lose your memory slowly, forgetting those around you and then yourself and that’s almost as bad as dying,” Hugo pauses. “Maybe even worse.” His voice lowers like he’s had some kind of experience with this, and Newton’s hit with a wave of sympathy. 

“Oh,” is all Newton can muster, but he’s thinking about Hugo’s diagnosis. He’s probably wrong. The gas has gotten to his head by now for sure. 

Without warning one of Hugo’s hands moves to Newton’s jaw and he shifts his body so his nose is almost touching Newton’s. Newton’s glasses fog slightly with the mix og Hugo and his breath. He leans in to press his lips to Newton’s when Newton’s tongue unglues itself to the roof of his mouth.

“Wait,” he says, breathy, and he hates how it makes him feel. He wants to kiss Hugo. But he can’t help the guilt lacerating his stomach, Hermann’s face etched in his mind. Newton blinks once, twice, and Hugo is patient. Newton considers his options, weighing Hugo’s words with his own morality.  _ I could be dead before I see Hermann again _ , he thinks, and it feels wrong. 

When he kisses Hugo, he closes his eyes, and he can almost imagine that it’s not him. If he squeezes his eyes shut, focusing on Hugo’s hand resting on the small of his back, he feels just like Hermann. 

Hugo dies the next week. He leaves a letter and a crate of his belongings assigned to Newton’s care now, like he’d been planning on this. Newton feels nothing; he’s numb. He didn’t kiss Hugo, anyway. Not really. He sits on the floor of their - his - room and sorts through the box. There’s a journal filled with messy scribbles of handwriting and a picture tucked into the front. Newton unfolds it, coarse grain fitting into the ridges of his fingertips. 

The picture is of Hugo and a girl, but he looks so different Newton hardly recognizes him. His hair is longer and his smile curves dimples into his cheeks.  _ Happiness makes someone chang _ e, Newton thinks, then amends his statement.  _ Or the opposite, really.  _ He wonders how he looks now. 

He flips the picture over to read the black ink across the back. It’s in German, and Newton squints to read it. His glasses seem to have been broken for a long time. 

The writing tells him that this is Becca, Hugo’s girlfriend, and the picture is from last summer. Her address is scrawled underneath her name in a different handwriting. Maybe her’s. Newton thinks of Hermann. If Newton were to die, how would anyone contact him?

He flips through the journal, because it’s not like he’s got anyone to betray a dead boy’s secrets to. Most of the pages are about Becca. Newton wonders if Hugo thought of her when they kissed. This, for a twisted reason, relieves him. The journal is boring after a while. Newton sifts through the rest of the box to find nothing of use, really, except for a locket that had lodged itself in the bottom, hung against the spotty wood. 

Newton picks it up, rubs it between his fingers, and unhinges the clasp. He doesn’t register the silence of the room until this moment; the soft click of metal resounding. 

Inside is a picture of Becca. Or a girl that looks much like her. Newton peels and discards the image from the locket so it’s empty again. He doesn’t have a picture of Hermann, he realizes, and his heart drops. He wishes he were like Hugo, clad with photo of his lover in his embarrassingly boring journal. This is how he will be remembered. It’s in Newton’s hands, yet he can’t bring himself to bring any of this home. Hugo will go as forgotten as he was to Newton a week ago in the pale morning light, lips brushing his own as they thought of other people. 

Newton realizes he doesn’t even know Hugo’s last name. 

How will he be documented?  _ He won’t _ . How will Becca know?  _ She won’t _ .

He takes out some of the parchment from his breast pocket and starts to write. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter is kind of filler. can u tell i was listening to eyes closed by halsey when i wrote this
> 
> u may be asking. who the heck is hugo. i dont fuckin know i just made him up yes i couldve made him raleigh and becca could be mako or smthn so its canon consistent but guess what i did not. also the thought of raleigh kissing newt makes me Uncomfy thank u micdrop
> 
> kofi: https://ko-fi.com/D1D76TM3

**Author's Note:**

> 1: [English translation] Work for victory as hard as we fight for it.


End file.
